"To your Prospects. There's no young man so liked and wanted everywhere."
"Oh, I'm fair at polo: I can ride straight, and shoot a bit," said Loveland with a pretence at self-depreciation he was far from feeling. "I get asked to all the amusing house parties. But you know as well as I do, that stopping at such places is a lot more expensive than swaggering about at the most expensive hotels in Europe."
"I know, dearest," sighed the devoted lady who by industrious spoiling had made him what he was. "I was only going on to say that you are a personage of importance; never think you're not. As for the two or three wretched girls who have hurled themselves at the heads of princes, when they might have had you—why, our English heiresses are growing disgustingly conceited and ambitious, quite unmaidenly, and let them regret their mistakes—you needn't. Val, you want my advice. Well, I've had an inspiration, I do believe, a real inspiration. Why don't you go to America?"
"To try ranching?"
"Good Heavens, no, my son! To try marrying. In America you'll succeed brilliantly. Why not run over and see what there is?"
She spoke as if to see meant to have, notwithstanding certain failures nearer home. But Loveland's sense of humour, which had a real existence, did not always bestir itself when his own affairs were in question. When things come too close to the eye, one is apt to lose the point of view. And Loveland did not laugh at his mother's suggestion.
"Oh, girls!" he said, distastefully. "Why go there for them? Plenty come over here to collect us."
"Ye—es. But think of the competition. There are still unmarried Dukes. It's so annoying, there always seem to be Dukes, and foreign semi-Royalties who might better stop in their own countries than prowl about ours, seeking what they may devour."
"That's what you propose my doing in the States."
"Oh, that's different. The Americans would be the foreigners, not you."